


It Really Held the Room Together

by Lady_Ganesh



Series: Falling Into [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Future Fic, Idiots in Love, M/M, Marriage, Petty Squabbles, post-retirement, terrible choices in home decor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 12:43:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15606549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh
Summary: Yuri gets a rug for the apartment.If only it wasn't sougly.





	It Really Held the Room Together

Yuri bought the rug in October.

Otabek had come home late, his flight an extra two hours behind thanks to the weather, and he tried to come in as quietly as he could. Yuri was still awake, though, one lamp on as he squinted at his tablet. "You should be asleep," Otabek said, trying to make it sound light, trying to hide the defeat and frustration from his voice.

It didn't work. "Hey," Yuri said, and was there, his arms around Otabek, pulling him in, over to the couch. "What's wrong?"

"It's...I shouldn't have pushed Roman on that last quad." It hadn't been worth the gamble, and he'd known it.

"He could've landed it," Yuri said. "And he's the one who made the final call, when he was out there."

"But--he's still out for the season," he said. Maybe the rest of his career.

"He made it to Worlds. And what about Ji-min?"

She'd done well. "I'm proud of her," he said. "But she did the work. She put her mind to it and--"

"You're a good coach," Yuri said.

He closed his eyes. "I should have--"

 _"No,"_ Yuri said. "You did your best and you got two skaters to Worlds. You have a coach here _competing_ with you, Becks. Fighting for your skaters, because your program is worth fighting over. Do you think that would've happened without you?"

"But--"

"No," Yuri said. "Fuck that. No buts. Roman wouldn't have been at Worlds without you. Maybe he's done. That happens. It happens all the time. You and I were lucky that we got to pick when we retired." He took Otabek's face in his hands. "Look at me."

Otabek opened his eyes.

Yuri's eyes looked gray in the dark. "You're a good coach. Those kids love you. You've helped them. One fall doesn't change that. Don't be stupid."

He grabbed Yuri, held on. It was better. He could almost believe it.

"Shit," Yuri said, after a while. "I had a whole thing planned."

"Yeah?"

He shoved his foot vaguely in the direction of the floor. "Bought a rug. Figured I'd...you know. Seduce you on it."

"You bought a rug so we could fuck on it?"

"We kept saying we needed a rug," Yuri said, "I just--"

"Bought a rug."

"Yeah."

"Bought us a rug." Something for their floor. Something--

Not permanent. But closer.

He could hear Yuri smiling. "Yeah," he said. "Us. A rug. Okay?"

"Okay," he said. He followed Yuri's foot to the rug. It was soft. It was incredibly fluffy. "Yura," he said.

"Surprise?"

They fucked on the rug. It was good.

"You're a good coach," Yuri told him again, when they'd stumbled into bed, and Otabek let himself believe it for a while.

 

By morning, Otabek was mostly through with blaming himself, Roman's injury looked better, and things were looking up, at least until he walked out into the living room and saw the rug.

It was hideous, and hideous in the way that only things Yuri Plisetsky loved could be. It looked a little like a tiger-striped unicorn had thrown up all over their living room floor, and the fluffiness that had been so soft the night before looked like an utter nightmare to clean. Otabek hoped that there wasn't already something crusted on it from the night before.

"You don't like it," Yuri said, coming up behind him and putting his arms around Otabek's waist.

"I like you," Otabek said.

Yuri snorted. "Close enough," he said, and kissed his neck.

It'd be gone the first time one of the cats threw up on it, Otabek figured. It'd be fine.

 

It was not fine. It was ugly, the fake fur started matting up in early November, and it was disgusting to clean. It never held a smell, though, so Otabek couldn't justify throwing it out.

His sister Elizabet loved it, and Otabek couldn't escape a faint sense of betrayal.

"He's almost thirty," Yuuri said, when he and Victor came for a clinic. "It's--really? He's not teasing you?"

Otabek just shrugged.

"Huh," Yuuri said.

"Good thing we're already staying at a hotel," Victor announced arily. "That rug would give us nightmares. You're a stronger man than me."

Yuuri shot him a look from underneath Sumi, who had adopted Yuuri as her new best friend the second he walked in the door. Yuri had always said cats liked people who didn't try to force eye contact on them. "Yurio didn't come to your apartment and judge your choices."

"Yes he did," Victor and Otabek said simultaneously.

"...it really is bad." Sumi butted up against Yuuri's hand, and he scratched her under her chin absent-mindedly. "But the cats must like sleeping on it."

"They like throwing up on it," Otabek said. "Sometimes they sleep on it. This one looked me straight in the eye before she threw up on it yesterday."

Victor snorted with laughter.

"You didn't tell him you hated it?" Yuuri asked.

Otabek shrugged. "He surprised me with it. It's fine."

"Oooh," Victor said. "So it was a romantic gesture, and you don't want--"

 _"Victor,"_ Yuuri chided, so sharply that Sumi gave him an annoyed look. He put his hand automatically on the back of her neck and started stroking, and she settled back down. "Don't."

"I think it's sweet," he said.

"Can we talk about tomorrow?" Otabek said. "I want to make sure we're all on the same page with the schedule."

"Sure," Victor said.

"What the fuck are you so smug about, old man?" Yuri asked, and crashed down next to Otabek. He started braiding his hair, still wet from his shower. "You assholes finally figured out how to get Maria to land that triple-triple?"

Otabek snorted.

 

Maria had nailed the triple-triple by December, and earned a silver at the GPF in Moscow. Otabek flew back with his students to give Yuri some extra time with his grandfather. When he got back to Almaty, there was something on the rug that he dearly hoped had been a hairball. Maybe the petsitter had missed it, maybe it had just been _that_ foul from the start. Otabek didn't want to know. Twenty-one minutes and sixteen seconds of scrubbing later, the whole apartment smelled like citrus cleaner. Why the hell did the ugliest rug in the world _also_ have to soak up every fluid like the grossest possible sponge?

He couldn't take it any more. No one should have to live like this. The rug would be happier too, when it wasn't getting puked on all the time.

He texted his sister. _You know our rainbow rug?_

_The rainbow tiger rug? Yura's rug?_

Otabek felt a twinge of regret, quickly overcome by the reminder that his hands were still raw and sore from scrubbing. _You want it?_

_Seriously?_

_Yes._

_OF COURSE I WANT THAT RUG._

It was utterly blissful in the apartment, until Yuri's flight came in and he realized it was gone.

 

Two days later, when Otabek came back from the rink, Yuri was sitting on the couch with Sumi like he'd never stormed out the door. "I'm still pissed," he said.

"I know." Otabek dropped his gym bag at the door and tried to pretend his heart wasn't in his throat. He kicked off his shoes and walked over to the couch. "I'm sorry."

Yuri held his arm out, like a king condescending to give favor, and Otabek dropped next to him, pulled him into an embrace. The relief flooded him, and he buried his face in Yuri's neck, breathed. Sumi, startled by the motion, darted away.

"Traitor," Yuri muttered in its direction.

That was all they said for a while. Otabek didn't want to break whatever spell there was, didn't want to let go. He didn't know he could miss anyone that much. Hadn't realized he could hurt that much.

"You picked everything else out," Yuri said. "All this is yours."

"I asked you--"

"But I wasn't there," Yuri said. "The rug, that was mine."

"I didn't realize," he said. He didn't say _I didn't realize you wanted this to be yours._

"No shit," Yuri said, and pulled him closer. "Asshole."

"It was gross, though."

"It was," he admitted. "But it was mine, still."

"You can buy another one. Whatever you want. It was stupid. And I should've asked you." Yuri smelled like fried potatoes and cabbage, the kind of comfort food he sought out when he was angry. Otabek had missed him so fucking much.

"The shower curtain," Yuri said. "I fucking hate that shower curtain so much. It's _plaid._ I hate it more every time I look at it. We can pick out another rug together. The shower curtain's mine."

"Okay," he said. "I didn't know you hated it."

"I was trying to be _nice,"_ Yuri said. "I didn't even have any practical reason, like it being hard to clean. I just hate it."

"What's wrong with plaid?"

Yuri laughed. "Everything is wrong with that shower curtain. Everything." He kissed the side of Otabek's face. "Your sister says hi."

 _What?_ "Elizabet?"

"You said if I missed the rug so much I could visit it at her place."

"Shit," Otabek said, and had to laugh.

Yuri kissed him, harder, and pulled him in so Otabek's chin was on his shoulder, his face buried in Otabek's neck. "Can I burn it?"

"What, the shower curtain? It's not _that_ bad."

"It's hideous." Yuri shifted his weight, pulled back to straddle Otabek's thighs. "It's so fucking ugly it's painful to look at. _Victor_ asked me why we had that hideous thing. Victor!"

"I don't get a veto over the replacement, do I?" Otabek said, knowing his doom was complete.

"No." He kissed Otabek's cheek, then his lips. "You lost your vote."

"Okay," Otabek said, and kissed him back.

He never did find out what Yuri did with the old shower curtain, but the new one was in the colors of the Kazakh flag, with a repeating eagle pattern. It was hideous.

They both loved it.

 

Elizabet's baby loved the rug.

Otabek tried not to wince every time his nephew tried to chew on it. (His sister had washed it, he told himself again and again. She'd probably disinfected it. It didn't help.)

"I knew he had good taste," Yuri said, on his back on the wretched thing with Muzaffar crawling across his chest. "Smart kid, like his uncle."

"Colorblind like his uncle," Otabek said wryly. Yuri kicked him. The rug was somehow less terrible with a baby crawling on it. And when Otabek knew he'd never have to clean it again. And when Yuri was on it, using words like _uncle._

Yuri looked happy. He could be soft around kids, and half the time when he wasn't, the kids ate it up anyway. He'd argued with Alexei over his triple lutz for twenty minutes straight the other day, and every day since the kid had asked when Yuri was going to be coming back.

Otabek put his hand on Muzaffar's back, covering Yuri's fingers with his own. Muzaffar was so impossibly tiny.

"I don't--" Yuri said. "I like him. But--I don't want kids."

"I wasn't--"

"This uncle thing," he said. "I like that. I like your family. But--"

"Yura," he said. "If I wanted kids, I wouldn't coach."

Yuri barked out a laugh that set Muzaffar's eyes wide.

 

When Elizabet and Yuri started dinner, Charlotte joined Otabek on the floor with the baby, who was starting to doze.

"I keep wondering," she said. "If I let him throw up on it, I might be able to throw it out. Or she'll get even more attached to it, and I'll never be able to get rid of it."

"I'm out of sisters to give it to," he said. "And our brother never liked it."

"Maybe I could get my sister's kids to fall in love with it."

"Do they like to play with fire?"

"I don't care if they burn it," she said. "I just want it gone."

"Whatever you do, don't throw it out without telling her."

Charlotte gave him a look. "Do you think I haven't learned that lesson?"

 

Otabek sometimes wondered how much it would change Yuri's image if people realized how often they ended up like this, spooned together in the dark, Yuri's fingers tangled in his. They did a lot of talking in bed. It was all starting to feel so familiar, just what the end of the day was like, Yuri's hair down, his hard edges softening.

"It's cool," Yuri said. "Your nephew. I liked him."

"Good," Otabek said. "I told Elizabet we might be able to stay with him sometimes, when my parents can't. I mean, I can, if you don't--"

"No," Yuri said. "That's fine. You're sure--you're sure you don't want--"

"I told you," Otabek said, squeezing Yuri's fingers. "I'm sure."

"I thought that was why you didn't want to get married."

Otabek blinked into the darkness, reeled the last year and change back and forth in his mind. "Did you want to get married?"

He felt Yuri's shrug against his back. "I don't know. They made me sign all the forms again, you know. At the zoo, 'cause I'm on the payroll now. Like if I get clawed in the face, who they'd call. I mean. I put your name down, but--we've never. Talked about it."

"No," he said. "I...wanted you to stay, when you got here. That was all. I didn't care if...I didn't care about the rest of it. I still don't, I guess. As long as you're here."

"Oh," Yuri said. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"But the kid thing. That's not--that's not because of me, right?"

"No," he said. "It's not. I meant it. Okay?"

"I love you. You know that, right?"

Otabek swallowed. "Yeah. I love you too."

"I didn't want you to--I don't want you to regret this, I guess."

"This is the life I want," he said. "If you want to get married, I'd...I'd like that. But don't do it because you don't want me--dissatisfied. Or whatever. Okay?"

"Okay," Yuri said. He shifted a little closer. "Would your parents like it?"

He kissed Yuri's hair. "They'd go crazy."

"I'd like...can we get married in Moscow? I don't want Grandpa to have to deal with the flight just for the wedding. But if your parents--"

 _We're actually doing this,_ Otabek thought, and it felt wild and wonderful and terrifying. "They won't care. They...kind of gave up when you moved in."

"Yeah?"

"I told them I didn't think you'd ever want to. So...that's what they thought."

"So you did want to."

"I wanted you to stay," he said, pulling the duvet a little tighter around them both. "I already told you."

"Okay." Yuri's hand squeezed his for a moment.

"We can have a party back here for my family if we get married in Moscow. Doesn't the zoo do events?"

"Maybe? I don't think we can actually have it by the lions, though."

"You're not fifteen any more," Otabek teased, and there was something strange and light in his chest. "We'll have to go to Hatsetsu if we want a honeymoon, won't we? The Katsukis won't let us get away with doing anything else."

"Probably not," Yuri said, thoughtfully.

 

The rug was pronounced dead some months later, in the middle of their wedding plans, the victim of a miserable bout of stomach flu that almost landed Muzaffar in the hospital. "Even Elizabet didn't want to see it after that," Otabek's sister-in-law explained. "So finally...it's gone."

"Congratulations," Otabek said, staring at yet another tiled wall in yet another locker room (flattering though it was to be a featured coach at a French skating clinic). "I hope you find a better rug to replace it with."

"I did manage to talk her into something we can actually clean without crying," she said.

"How's he doing?" Yuri had worried like a mother hen; he'd be pissed if Otabek didn't have an update the next time they talked.

"Much better, eating a lot to make up for what he lost, I guess. You'll have to stop by, if you're not too busy negotiating with Moscow."

"Funny," he said.

"I understand," Charlotte said. "He's the only family Yura has."

"The only family he grew up with," Otabek corrected, because his mother was still around, somewhere, and it was hard to describe how the Katsukis and Nishigoris had carefully integrated him into their lives.

"I still don't know what to get you. Elizabet says she has an idea but she won't tell me what it is."

"You don't need to--"

"I know, I know, Mr. Big International Coach. Let us do something for you, all right?"

"All right."

 

The ceremony in Moscow was small. Yakov and Lilia made it, along with the rinkmates from St. Petersburg Yuri still liked and some disconcertingly attractive cousins Yuri claimed he hardly knew. When Yuri's mother showed up at the reception, Victor steered her away from the bar and into a long, involved conversation about her long-gone idol career while Yuuri whirled Otabek's new husband into a tango.

He shook his new mother-in-law's hand when she left, and kept his face neutral.

"She was sober at least," he said to Yuuri later, while Yuuri was getting yet another glass of champagne.

Yuuri shook his head, a little sadly. "Not drunk," he said. "But not sober. But...at least not drunk." He put his hand on Otabek's arm. "Are you all right?"

"She's pretty." She looked both older and younger than he had thought she would be, with dark circles under her eyes poorly masked with concealer. They were both older now than she had been when she'd left Moscow for good. Yuri had been ten.

He wished, for a moment, that he'd dragged some of his own family there. Silly, of course; Elizabet was Yuri's favorite and the baby still too small to travel well, and they'd have the big party his parents had threatened when they got back to Almaty. But he wanted Yuri to have more people there, more people who loved him, who didn't blow in and out of his life like a breeze.

On the other hand, Yuri didn't like crowds, and his grandfather had always been the family he'd cared about most. And Nikolai was happy, his fond glance returning again and again to his grandson, bright and golden, looking impossibly beautiful and strong. _Married._ They were married.

It still didn't seem real.

"Come on," Yuuri said. "Victor had his dance, but I haven't yet. You're too handsome to be alone at the bar."

"You just got a fresh drink," Otabek objected, more for appearance's sake than out of any consideration for the champagne.

"It'll wait," Yuuri said, genially, sliding an arm around his waist and starting a fox trot, despite the music having almost nothing to do with a fox trot. But Yuuri's confidence was contagious, and he was a good lead; it certainly wasn't the first time they'd managed not to embarrass themselves on the dance floor.

By the time Yuri came to cut in, he'd almost gotten the hang of it, and then Yuri pulled him close and he decided he didn't care so much about keeping the steps anyway.

 

They would leave for Hatsetsu the next day, but Yuuri's grandfather--who had apparently done some people in high places some favors back in the day--had somehow gotten them into a beautiful suite at the St. Regis, and insisted that it hadn't really cost anything, and Yuratchka, stop yelling, your face will be all red for your wedding.

They hardly noticed the room, and it was ridiculous, they'd lived together for almost two years and had been fucking for something more than a decade, but the second the door had closed behind them, they'd grabbed each other like they hadn't seen each other in six months. The ties had gone off hours ago, but now the studs clattered against the bedside table and their jackets landed somewhere on the floor, and Otabek dropped to his knees before he even had his belt unbuckled, working at Yuri's fly, mouthing him through his briefs before Yuri got his hand down his pants and pulled his cock out for Otabek to suck.

His jaw hurt when he woke in the morning, and his knees hurt more, and he didn't regret any of it. There were a pile of cards to go through from the ceremony, and Yuri flipped through most of them while Otabek showered. "Something from your sister, too," he said when Otabek got out, toweling off. "I saved that."

It was a smallish box wrapped in gold paper (A comment about Yuri not changing his name? She thought it just looked pretty? Impossible to tell with Elisabet), wrapped with a white ribbon. Yuri pulled the ribbon off and let Otabek take the lid off the box.

"Jewelry?" Yuri said.

"It's lucite," Otabek said.

It was something of a hobby of Elisabet's: Otabek still had an oval four-leaf-clover as a keychain she'd made him for his birthday, years ago. These were little square boxes on chains, with something bright inside--

He started laughing.

"What?" Yuri said, lifting his up and squinting at it. "They're necklaces, okay, but--I don't get it."

"Yura," Otabek said. "It's the rug." A little fragment of the rug, forever preserved in clear plastic.

"It is--" He paused. "Holy shit. It is." He started laughing too. "Your sister," he said. "Fuck."

"Welcome to the family," Otabek said.

Yuri tackled him. "I love you," he said, as he pushed Otabek's back against the floor. "Shit, I love you. And your family. And you're all insane."

 _"Your_ family now," Otabek said, and kissed him, his lips, his chin, whatever he could reach. "You're stuck with us. All of us."

"Good," Yuri said, and Otabek might have been the only person in the world that realized his voice shook, just a little. "Try to get rid of me."

"Never," Otabek said, and pulled him closer.


End file.
